Washington, Sep 20 (Reuters) : Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met President
Barack Obama at the White House and received the highest congressional
award on Wednesday.

Suu Kyi, making a
coast-to-coast U.S. tour, held private talks with Obama in the Oval
Office after being feted by lawmakers in the ornate U.S. Capitol, where
she was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal for her long fight
for democracy in a country ruled by army generals since 1962.

"This
is one of the most moving days of my life, to be here in a house
undivided, a house joined together to welcome a stranger from a distant
land," she said.

"Among all these
faces are some I saw while I was under house arrest, and some I saw
after I was released from house arrest," said Suu Kyi, acknowledging
strong support from U.S. lawmakers during her 17 years of house arrest.

The
Oval Office setting for the first meeting between the two Nobel Peace
laureates afforded Suu Kyi's visit some of the trappings normally
reserved for visiting foreign presidents and prime ministers.

But
the White House, apparently treading carefully lest they allow the Suu
Kyi events upstage Myanmar's government, kept the meeting low-key. News
photographers were allowed in briefly but not television cameras or
print reporters. Obama and Suu Kyi met for about half an hour.

Obama,
seeking re-election in November, seized the chance to meet Suu Kyi on
the second day of her U.S. tour. The encounter could help him highlight
what many see as a foreign policy accomplishment of his administration
in helping to push Myanmar's generals onto the path of democratic
change.

MYANMAR PRESIDENT ACKNOWLEDGEDAt
her congressional medal ceremony, both Suu Kyi and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton acknowledged the presence in the audience of a minister
representing Myanmar President Thein Sein and the country's new
ambassador in Washington.

"This
task has been made possible by the reform measures instituted by
President Thein Sein," said Suu Kyi in her acceptance speech.

Earlier
on Wednesday, the United States removed sanctions that blocked any U.S.
assets of Thein Sein and the speaker of Myanmar's lower house of
parliament and that generally barred American companies from dealing
with them.

Thein Sein and lower
house speaker Shwe Mann, once members of the former military junta who
have won international praise for driving reforms in the 18 months since
the military ceded power to a quasi-civilian government, were both
removed from the U.S. Treasury's list of "specially designated
nationals."

Thein Sein will visit
New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly next week, when he is
expected to meet senior U.S. officials.

U.S.
lawmakers and officials who turned out to honor Suu Kyi expressed
amazement - some tearing up - that she had made the journey from house
arrest to Washington.

"I might
have hoped, but I'm not sure I expected, that one day I would have the
honor of welcoming my personal hero, Aung San Suu Kyi, to the Congress
of the United States," said Republican Senator John McCain.

WEST WING LESSONSClinton said she expected change to come in the country also known as Burma, but did not know how long it would take.

"It's
almost too delicious to believe, my friend, that you are here in the
rotunda of our great capitol, the centerpiece of our democracy as an
elected member of your parliament," she said.

The
solemn ceremony was sprinkled with lighter moments, as Clinton related a
trip to Myanmar last year, where she quoted the speaker of the lower
house of parliament as saying, "Help us learn how to be a democratic
congress, a parliament."

"He went
on to tell me that they were trying to teach themselves by watching old
segments of The West Wing," Clinton said, referring to the fictional
U.S. television series about presidential politics. "I said, 'I think we
can do better than that, Mr. Speaker.'"

Suu
Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy in
opposition to the military junta that held her under house arrest for
years. Her last stay in the United States was in the 1970s as a United
Nations employee.

Suu Kyi's
election to parliament in April helped to transform the pariah image of
Myanmar and persuade the West to begin rolling back sanctions after a
year of dramatic reforms, including the release of about 700 political
prisoners in amnesties between May 2011 and July.

Obama
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, early in his term with no concrete
foreign policy successes on his record, leading critics to say he was
rewarded mostly for eloquent speech-making.(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert, Arshad Mohammed, Andrew Quinn and Mark Felsenthal; editing by Mohammad Zargham)